Man-Child Learns to Dress Like a Man

A sartorial remaking, inspired by Ted Danson’s character on “A Man on the Inside.”

I changed my entire look shortly after turning 1, graduating from onesies to jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. No one at the time imagined it would be my final fashion evolution.

But I am now 53 years old, which is an age, historically speaking, when people are dead. And I still dress like a child.

I do not dress more immaturely than the other 53-year-old men I know. If anything, I dress better, by which I mean that my sweatshirts mostly lack hoods and my T-shirts mostly have no messages on them. But I have seen images of men in previous centuries, and their reaction to my daily outfits would be a pitying glance and a donation of spare change.

This look has served me well enough. So well that I never thought to question it until recently, when I saw Ted Danson in his new Netflix series, “A Man on the Inside.”

For the first time in my adult life I thought, “I need to dress like him.”

Mr. Danson, who plays a retired architecture professor named Charles on the show, was not suiting up for a corporate meeting or a wedding. I knew how to do that. He was dressed for anywhere. His outfits — deep-hued windowpane-pattern jackets worn with sweaters, collared shirts, pocket squares, ties — were five percent dandy and 100 percent classic. They radiated a breezy confidence that said, “I’m a human who does not need a ride to the mall.”